PFFR

PFFR. An art collective from New York. These people are way, way out there. They made the mind blowing television program Wonder Showzen. Now they do an animated show called Xavier: Renegade Angel that is completely strange and totally psychedelic. It's about a philosophical faun-like creature with backwards knees "seeking the mystery of his own origin." He is often fending off violent rednecks or meeting with his Shaman. PFFR describes it as "a warning to children and adults about the dangers of spirituality." Also check out their website, it's one of the raddest I've ever seen. They are a band too and this is a video they made:



And here is a link to a totally mental episode of Xavier.

They are screening their new avant garde porn film Final Flesh at the Silent Movie Theater in Hollywood June 9th.

Upcoming Gigs / Flyers

P-Lord Flyer

Jay Nelson

I wanted to share with you some of Jay Nelsons new art. His work has been steadily evolving in the 20 or so years I've known him. His current exhibit at Triple Base gallery in San Francisco is called The Autonomous Zone. He draws inspiration from the "western frontier as a destination for a romantic solitary experience." Its all about being self-sufficient and existing peacefully within nature. He makes sculptures that are functional vehicles for rolling around solo. Jay also builds treehouses throughout the country. I think he even built one in the Oakland airport. His paintings are beautifully psychedelic interpretations of nature. They are really something to behold. Its been interesting to see him cultivate an earth based vision of the future, honing his personal interests and beliefs into this amazingly expressive artwork.



Dead Mans Finger's State Park, 2008
watercolor and gouche on paper, 40" x 25"



Paul's Vision, 2008
oil on panel, diptych, 47 3/4" x 71 3/4"



Humblot House, 2008
oil on panel, 34 3/4" x 47 3/4"



Acorn Treehouse, Ukiha, CA, 2008



Study Case, mixed media, 2008



Honda Spree, Study in Temporary Autonomy, 2008

Upcoming Shows

I made these flyers for some upcoming gigs. Come on out if you live in the Los Angeles area.

The Laughing Light of Plenty

New band alert! The Laughing Light of Plenty is Thomas Bullock and Eddie Ruscha. A lot of readers of this webpage probably know about Thomas from Wicked, Rub n Tug, Map of Africa, etc... He is the best DJ in the world and a phenomenal producer. Eddie Ruscha is the son of the famous artist. He does amazing art and music as Secret Circuit and Dada Munchamonkey. The art above and below is by him. The first Laughing Light song, The Rose, is coming out on Whatever We Want Records, another 12" limited to 700 copies. Compared to Thomas' other music projects of late (Bobbie Marie, MOA, Welcome Stranger) this stuff is more dancefloor friendly and- dare i say- commercial? I think it is among his best work. It also has the best bass line I have heard in long time.

Listen to The Rose here.

Loft Art

I found this painting on David Mancuso's Loft website. He started the dancing all night to music phenomenon with his Loft parties in New York in 1970. About the painting: "This work of art, painted by Penelope Grill, is a pastel. The characters were inspired by real Loft people at a Prince Street party. In the foreground are dj's, promoters and a writer. In the right background David is at the turntables while his devoted fans cluster around him. The paintings that hang on the walls around the dance floor were painted by Penelope Grill."

Here is another one: Around the Punchbowl. In the early days there was always acid in the punch.
About the painting: "All the characters were inspired by real Loft people. The refreshment in the large bowl was a lightly sweetened citrus punch. Slices of orange and lemon floated on top. The man in the Hawaiian shirt on the lower left is wearing an evil eye glass pendant. These were given out a gifts to everyone attending the party one evening. The party mascot, Wolfie, the cat, stretches out under the table. If you attended the parties on Prince Street you may know who some of the people were."

Untooning

These are trippy. A gentleman that works for a company called Pixeloo creates these realistic renderings of cartoon classics. Check out Jessica Rabbit:



Homer looks like a creepy spun out hippy scraped off the Dead lot:


And Mario:


You can see larger images on his website linked above. They look even crazier up close.

Karlheinz Stockhausen: 1928 - 2007

One of the great musicians of our time died last week. He was one of the furthest out composers ever. Karlheinz was one of the first to apply concepts and philosophy to classical music. The resulting music is now referred to as 'new music' or 'experimental.' His works were highly conceptual, extremely complicated, and very challenging to understand, and at times, to listen to. Stockhausen wrote the first piece of published electronic music. Like his contemporary John Cage, he worked extensively with chance in his compositions. He composed hundreds of works in his lifetime. His piece Stimmung simply held a B flat ninth for 70 minutes. His work Gruppen was for 3 orchestras playing simultaneously, slowing shifting patterns. From 1977 to 2003 he worked on Licht, a cycle of seven operas, each based on a day of the week. The piece was over 29 hours long. A performance of Licht requires a string quartet in four helicopters hovering above. I could go on and on about the ideas behind his works. If you want to know more check out his wikipedia page.

Allison Cortson

Allison has a show down at the Happy Lion Gallery in Chinatown right now. She makes portraits of people by collecting the dust from around their house and uses it to make the piece. She told me a lot of dust is skin that falls off a person so the paintings are partially made up of the actual person. The works are all really big in size and look amazing in person.
Not all the dust paintings are of people. I like this one a lot:
The piece above is a painting of the "debris of a hypothetical high energy collision between two protons." It is a new work included in the show downtown.

Allison collects 8mm porn from the 1970's and this piece is an oil painting of a still from one of the films. You can see more of her work here.